Bad Eye Candy

I recently installed X.Org 7 with Exa, Composite and the famed xcompmgr on my Linux desktop. This didn’t enable any fancy special effects for my lowly built-in via video chipset. However, it did finally do away with “rip and tear” on my desktop. That is, when I drag a window over another one, it just smoothly glides across. When I switch workspace, it’s instant — I don’t see as much “widget redrawing.”

More and more advances are going to inevitably lead to Linux “eye candy.” Here’s a great post on Slashdot regarding good versus bad eye candy.

Here’s a great example: pull-down menus in Mac OS X vs the same in Windows XP. On the Mac, pulldowns appear instantly, and fade away once something is selected; this is correct behaviour, as you asked for a menu – there should be no delay. Fading away is fine because the selection has been made, and you have moved on. In XP, the menus fade up, and vanish instantly – totally backwards. That is bad eye candy.

You know, I never thought about that, but I always turned off menu fading on Windows XP because I could “feel” the delay, even on my Nvidia card on my desktop. I never realized how much more sense it would make to display the menu instantly, and fade it away upon selection.

I hope this conservative approach is taken by Linux devs as they implement eye candy. Functional and beautiful, please.